Change the Container, Not the Contents

And this came through, this is something I'm quite connected to actually, and in a lot of my work.

And if you've worked with me with organizational change, or if you are involved with organizational change, you'll be familiar with this idea that when you change the environment, you By ripple effect, you change things within the environment.

So a flower bed, if the roses are not doing very well, if you water the garden regularly, feed it properly, cut down the hedge that's stopping the sunlight getting to it, whatever it is, or put up a screen because it's getting too much sunlight, then the dying roses will revive or more likely to do so because you've changed the environment that they live in.

Some people think that the world is waiting for the right politicians to get into place, the right leaders, because the right leaders will then make the changes that are necessary for everything to be better.

Other people think that if you change the environment within which the politicians and the environment they live in, change the environment, that that will then change the nature of those politicians and those leaders.

And by changing the environment in that context, what people are meaning is changing culture, changing societal norms, changing general behavior, changing what people will sign up to, what they will comply with, what they will cooperate with.

And I think that's true.

I think we've seen examples where, you know, you've got a community of some sort.

And if something shifts in the culture of the community, for example, people start becoming more collaborative.

People start being more collaborative.

helping each other, being more creative.

People are more innovative.

People are more risk conscious in a creative way, not just a restricting way.

That then alters the behavior and the energy and the conduct of the leaders.

And I think many people have seen this.

So this is why people do family therapy work.

because let's say you have somebody in a family who is seemingly the problem, in quotes.

If you then go in and you help that family improve its culture, raise the degree to which love is being experienced and expressed, deal with some of the undercurrents, what's not being said, clear that up, help to heal some trauma that may have been experienced, systemically in the family or ancestrally in the family or in that particular demographic or whatever it may be, the person who's, in quotes, the problem, does that sometimes magically become not the problem because the environment that they're living in has changed.

And that has altered something for them, which they've responded to.

And a place where I saw this very strongly was if I was working with a board in a corporate context and they say, oh, well, everything's fine on the board except for him, that one person.

He's the problem.

He's the one who blocks everything.

He's the one who makes conversations last for days and days when they should have been knocked on the head hours ago.

Or he's the one who takes stupid risks all the time.

And the only problem was if you just get rid of that person, the problem never actually went away.